Pulling it all Together!

When you’re writing, you can start just about anywhere: the melody, the lyric, the melody and lyric together, the chord progression. Go with whatever comes to mind ﬁrst. Sometimes a song behaves itself properly and starts itself at the beginning, progressing logically through to the end like a well told story. Sometimes it doesn’t. If the hook line for the chorus presents itself ﬁrst, which is often the case, write it down and go from there, working backward and forward as the ideas come. Any way that works is the right way.

The ideal process of writing a Christian song should be not only a cooperation of the left and right sides of the brain, but a collaboration of the writer’s spirit with the Holy Spirit, producing an anointed and appointed message instigated by God and crafted by the writer.

When Matt’s home church was trying to ﬁnd a “missing dynamic” in their worship, the pastor “dismissed the band and sound system for a season, and we gathered together with just our voices. His point was that we’d lost our way in worship, and the way to get back to its heart would be to strip everything away.” It worked. Eventually, people met God in a new way, singing a cappella and praying aloud.

From this, the lyrics came: “When the music fades, all is stripped away, and I simply come, Longing just to bring back something that’s of worth that will bless your heart … I’m coming back to the heart of worship, and it’s all about You, Jesus.”

When the church reintroduced the band, they had gained a new perspective. “Worship is all about Jesus, and He commands a response in the depths of our souls no matter what the circumstance and setting. ‘The Heart of Worship’ simply describes what occurred.”